What Are Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources?

This post comes from a book I am working on called Research and Writing for Music History Students: A Field Guide. While the book is aimed directly at students in the music history sequence, the concepts in it apply to anyone who is looking to accomplish research. In this excerpt from the “Tactics” section of the book, I discuss the definitions of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, and how to use them. You may also want to read my previous chapter, Bibliography Sprint: How to Get 30 Sources in 15 Minutes.

Cite primary and secondary sources in your research project. Avoid citing tertiary sources. Make it a habit to go to the source.

It is important to understand the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. These terms refer to how many layers of scholarly interpretation and analysis have been applied to the source material before you are interacting with it. To get a sense of how this works, consider a research project on Duke Ellington’s compositions in the 1940s.

Primary sources for a project on Ellington’s compositions in the 1940s would include Ellington’s manuscript scores, his letters, newspaper and magazine articles from the 1940s, and any other similar documents. These artifacts have not been filtered through the work of other scholars. Primary sources, in other words, are sources that require scholarly analysis and interpretation. Primary sources are often artifacts created during the time under study, in this case the 1940s.

Secondary sources for this Ellington project would include any scholarly books or articles on Ellington’s compositions in the 1940s. In other words, secondary sources are written by scholars who have engaged with primary and other secondary sources. This would include Beyond Category, the biography of Ellington by John Edward Hasse. Hasse used Ellington’s archives at the Smithsonian Institution to inform his account of Ellington’s life. Whereas primary sources need direct analysis by scholars, secondary sources include the scholarly analysis of others on a topic.

Tertiary sources are the most distant from the primary sources, because tertiary sources summarize secondary sources. The most common example of a tertiary source would be an encyclopedia article. This means that Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians is a tertiary source.

How to Use Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources in Your Research

The standard for scholars is to utilize a balance of primary and secondary sources in their research. Tertiary sources are used to orient a scholar to a new concept or research area, and to find important bibliographic resources (use something like my Bibliographic Sprint method). But then, the scholar is expected to review the secondary literature themselves, and engage with primary source artifacts during the course of their research. Relying only on tertiary sources—summaries of other scholars’ work—is insufficient. Make it a habit to go to the source.

A term paper for your music history survey course is different than doing an extensive senior project or a thesis. Because you typically have less time to complete it, there is less of an expectation for you to engage with primary sources at the same level as a senior project or thesis. The main primary sources you use might be music scores, recordings, or letters written by composers.

You will, however, be expected to review and understand the secondary literature on your topic. Secondary literature is what you collected during the bibliography sprint exercise. Tertiary sources will be used at the beginning, to get a broad picture of your topic.

This is a rough idea of how you might expect to use primary, secondary, and tertiary sources in the process of your research:

• Use tertiary sources such as reference articles to get an overview of important people and concepts that relate to your topic.

• Use the bibliographies in tertiary sources to find relevant secondary sources.

• Use secondary sources such as scholarly books and articles to understand the current scholarly views, debates, and research questions on your topic.

• Find primary source documents, such as scores, letters, or writing from the time under study to add your own analysis and interpretations to your thesis. Primary source documents are commonly used as evidence to support main points.

In the end, the citations in your project should include a balance of primary and secondary sources, but should avoid citing tertiary sources.